American Theatre Companies, 1888-1930

1926-27: Polly with a Past, The Song and Dance Man, The Show-Off, The Gorilla, The Girl from Childs, The Clinging Vine, White Collars, Meet the Wife. Laff That Off, The Seventh Guest, Adam and Eva, Way Down East, The Man Who Came Back, Square
Crooks, It's a Boy, Lightnin', The Gingham Girl, Is Zat So?, The Cave Girl, Kempy,
The Woman He Married, The Charity Ball, For All of Us, Dear Me. The Patsy, The Silent Witness, Puppy Love, Blind Youth, Hush Money, Sure Fire, Rolling Stones, Charley's Aunt, Seventh Heaven, Hell's Belles, She Walked in Her Sleep, One Day, The Fall
Guy, The Marriage of Kitty, Mary's Ankle.

1927-28: The Little Spitfire, The Ghost Train, If I Was Rich, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Aloma of the South Seas, New Brooms, Alias the Deacon, Gertie, The Butter and Egg
Man, Smilin' Through, The Unseen Way, Sis Hopkins, The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, Up in Mabel's Room, I Love You, The Girl from Out Yonder, Cradle Snatchers, Mary's
Other Husband, What Ann Brought Home, Little Jessie James, Take My Advice, White
Cargo, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Noose, Tangerine, Easy Come, Easy Go, Pigs, Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, Tommy, She Couldn't Say No.

ROBERSON-GIFFORD PLAYERS. The Roberson-Gifford Players ( Duluth, Minnesota), also known as the Orpheum Players, was owned and managed by George C. Roberson and Eskell G. Gifford and engaged by the Blackmore
brothers to play at Duluth's Orpheum Theatre. The indefinite run was opened
on February 19, 1927, with the
Barry Conners comedy The Patsy.

Duluth, which was one of the boomtowns of the early twentieth century, had
always been a theatre town. In addition to being a regular stop for road shows,
it had hosted many small stock companies. The Roberson-Gifford Players were
preceded in Duluth by the Ferris Comedians*, the Elliot-Courtnay Stock
Company, the Northwestern Opera Company, the Melbourne MacDowell Stock
Company, the Gus A. Forbes Stock Company, the Mack-Leone Stock
Company*, and the Baldwin Players*. Only the Ferris, Mack-Leone, and
Baldwin organizations had runs of more than a few weeks.

Sidney and Ernest Blackmore, lessees of the Orpheum, leased and/or owned
and operated a number of theatres in Minnesota. At the time their company
opened in Duluth, Roberson and Gifford were or had been operating stock
companies in Erie, Pittsburgh, Butler, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Peoria and Springfield, Illinois; Madison and Superior, Wisconsin; and Hamilton, Ohio. Roberson and Gifford as well as their stage director, Francis Sayles, had been
active in stock theatre throughout the Midwest. An early Gifford company had
held the boards of the Palace Theatre in Superior, Wisconsin, for fifteen weeks

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